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Obama promises Arabs Jerusalem will be theirs

Posted: May 30, 2009 5:39 pm Eastern By Aaron Klein © 2009 WorldNetDaily

Official: President said Palestinian state with holy city capital ‘in American interest’

JERUSALEM – President Obama and his administration told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting last week the U.S. foresees the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, according to a top PA official speaking to WND.

"The American administration was very friendly to the position of the PA," said Nimer Hamad, Abbas’ senior political adviser.

"Abu Mazen (Abbas) heard from Obama and his administration in a very categorical way that a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital is in the American national and security interest," Hamad said.

Read the groundbreaking work that exposes the threats to Israel from within and without in Aaron Klein’s "The Late, Great State of Israel" from WND Books.

Another PA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WND today that Obama informed Abbas he would not let Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "get in the way" of normalizing U.S. relations with the Arab and greater Muslim world.

"We were told from this new administration they will not allow a Netanyahu government to hurt their efforts of rehabilitating U.S. relations with the Arab and Islamic world, which is a high priority of Obama," the official said, speaking during a visit to Cairo.

Also in Cairo today, Abbas met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, where the Palestinian leader briefed Egypt’s president on his recent trip to Washington, saying the U.S. was committed to bringing about an end to Israeli construction in the West Bank.

Hamad’s comments about Jerusalem today come as controversy abounded regarding the U.S. position on Israel’s capital city.

Last week, the State Department refuted a speech in which Netanyahu said Jerusalem never will be divided.

"Jerusalem is Israel’s capital," Netanyahu said at an event marking Jerusalem’s reunification. "Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided."

In response, the State Department released a statement that Jerusalem "is a final status issue."

"Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to resolve its status during negotiations. We will support their efforts to reach agreements on all final status issues," the statement said.

Also last week, a top Palestinian Authority official claimed in a WND interview that the Obama administration told the PA that Jerusalem will never be united under Israeli sovereignty.

"Americans said an open Jerusalem – yes. But a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty – no," Hatem Abdel Khader, the PA’s minister for Jerusalem affairs, said in comments to both WND and Israel’s Ynetnews website.

"(The Obama administration) has made clear that Jerusalem must be accessible to everyone – but not united under Israel’s rule," Khader said.

Khader claimed the U.S. is cooperating with the PA to "thwart Israel’s plans in Jerusalem."

"When they collaborate with us in Israeli courts against home demolitions or the confiscation of land we see their attitude," he said.

Khader told WND, "The Americans are very present on the ground, and they are making pressure over Israeli authorities and even municipalities."

"They are acting according to the concept that the failure to establish a Palestinian state would jeopardize U.S. national security interests – and without Jerusalem there is no Palestinian state," he said.

U.S. helps Palestinians live illegally near Temple Mount

Khader’s claim the U.S. is helping the Palestinians gain a foothold in Jerusalem is accurate. In April, WND reported that under intense American pressure and following a nearly unprecedented behind-the-scenes U.S. campaign, the Netanyahu government has decided not to bulldoze Palestinian homes built illegally on Jewish-owned property in Jerusalem.

The issue is critical since the 80 homes in question are located in Silwan, an eastern Jerusalem neighborhood close to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem’s Old City that the Palestinians claim as a future capital. Jewish groups have been working to fortify the community’s Jewish presence. Silwan is adjacent to the City of David, a massive archeological dig just outside the Temple Mount that is constantly turning up Temple artifacts.

Like tens of thousands of other Arab housing projects throughout eastern Jerusalem, the Palestinian homes in Silwan were illegally constructed on property long ago purchased by Jews. The Israeli government ordered the structures’ legal demolition.

But during a visit here in early March, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton strongly protested the planned bulldozing.

"Clearly this kind of activity is unhelpful and not in keeping with the obligations entered into under the Road Map," she said. "It is an issue that we intend to raise with the government of Israel and the government at the municipal level in Jerusalem."

The Road Map calls for Israel to freeze Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank but does not bar Israel from dismantling illegally constructed Palestinian homes in Jerusalem.

WND learned that in the weeks since Clinton’s visit here, the U.S. mounted an intensive campaign lobbying the Israeli government against tearing down the illegal Palestinian homes in Silwan. The campaign included letters from the Middle East section of the State Department addressed to various Jerusalem municipalities, with copies of the letters sent to the offices of Israel’s prime minister and foreign minister. The letters called on Israel to allow the illegal Palestinian homes in Silwan to remain and stated any demolitions would not foster an atmosphere of peace.

Also, in a follow-up visit here, State Department officials made it clear to their Israeli counterparts the U.S. opposes the Silwan bulldozing.

According to sources in the Israeli government, including in Netanyahu’s administration, a decision has been made not to bulldoze the illegal Palestinian homes. The sources said the issue of the homes may be raised again in the future, but for the time being the houses will remain intact.

The sources attributed the decision against the bulldozing – which has not yet been announced – to the intense American campaign against the house demolitions.

Said one source in Netanyahu’s administration, "This was very frustrating to us. Can you imagine if a foreign government came in and told a city office in the U.S. not to tear down a house that was illegally constructed on someone else’s property?"

While Clinton opposed the Palestinian house demolitions, informed Israeli officials said the Obama administration is carefully monitoring Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem and has already protested to the highest levels of Israeli government about evidence of housing expansion in those areas.

The officials, who spoke on condition that their names be withheld, said that last month Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, oversaw the establishment of an apparatus based in the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem that closely monitors eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods, incorporating regular tours on a daily basis.

The officials said that in recent meetings Mitchell strongly protested Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem. Mitchell also condemned the work of nationalist Jewish groups to purchase property in Jerusalem’s Old City, including in areas intimately tied to Judaism.

Israel recaptured eastern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount – Judaism’s holiest site – during the 1967 Six Day War.

The Palestinians, however, have claimed eastern Jerusalem as a future capital. About 244,000 Arabs live in Jerusalem, mostly in eastern neighborhoods, out of a total population of 724,000, the majority Jewish.

Obama may become a disaster

(c) American Thinker  By James Lewis
By their actions ye shall know them. By now we are seeing an ominous pattern of actions by the O administration. We know that President Obama is a very slick liar indeed, but then so was Bill Clinton. But Clinton had a smaller majority in Congress, and was forced to compromise after the Gingrich Congress was elected in 1994. It is still possible that Obama may turn toward the mainstream. But the early omens look dark.

Foreign and military affairs

There is a reason why Israel s voters are suddenly turning to the center-Right Netanyahu and Likud. They fear that for the first time since Harry Truman, an American administration is turning against the Jewish State. Obama s first phone call after the election was made to Mahmoud Abbas. His first television interview was with Al Arabiya. The appointments of Samantha Power and Susan Rice bode ill for the entire Middle East. A meeting with Hugo Chavez — to negotiate what, exactly?  Forthcoming recognition of radical Islamofascist Iran on their terms, not ours, are all ominous straws in the wind. Richard Holbrooke has just infuriated two crucial governments in Pakistan and Afghanistan, by predicting their doom, and still was appointed special envoy to those governments.

The O’s just announced a 10% cut in the planned increase in the defense budget, while the overall budget deficit has just risen by two trillion dollars. That may signal a Carteresque drawdown in our burdened military. This is not the time to lower our guard, but like Jimmy Carter, the O administration is  betting against history.

We now know that in violation of Federal law, the Obama campaign started negotiations with Iran, Syria and perhaps Hugo Chavez long before American voters elected O.  That flagrant disregard for the law and for simple propriety signals a radical turn Left. If that is accurate, expect the Obama administration to start a scapegoating campaign against Binyamin Netanyahu if he becomes Prime Minister. That would be the first time that any American administration has turned against an elected leader of a vigorous, pro-American democratic ally. The voters in Israel may be preparing to go it alone if necessary. It would be difficult, but it can be done.

Flunking Econ 101

The O administration has some sensible economic voices, but they don’t seem to carry much clout. Larry Summers is fairly mainstream, Robert Reich is turning radical, and Paul Krugman is a hair-pulling wild  man. The so-called stimulus bill is pure political payoff to Democrat city machines, the teachers’ unions, and faithful leftwing armies like ACORN.  Those 1.17 trillion dollars are  not designed to stimulate normal economic activity, defined as products and services that Americans want and will work for — which is what "supply and demand" really means, after all.

The economy is one gigantic incentive machine. Take away the incentive value of work and buying things, and yes, you will get a very bad recession. And no, Nancy Pelosi has it wildly wrong by arguing that more subsidized birth control means more wealth per person, for those who are actually born. The administration is even ignoring the first-grade lessons of the Smooth-Hawley with its buy-American provisions in the House bill. Suddenly alarmist headlines are appearing in the worshipful European press. Will the US turn protectionist under Obama? Watch what the Senate does with the outlandish House bill, and we will know the answer.

Future generations are being burdened with this second trillion dollar payoff in a few months — after the first trillion bucks for TARP.  But fear not. The O administration is promising yet more trillions in spending, under the mad delusion that the New Deal didn’t spend enough on things people didn’t want. The stock market is signaling fear and doubt. So far,  the market looks to be right.

A Commissar style of governance

Vladimir Lenin pioneered a double-layered style of control by Soviet Party Commissars. Every government official and military officer was doubled by a Party Commissar, who wielded the real power. The result was wild swings between radicalization and stagnation in the USSR. Nobody could act without worrying about the local Commissars, who owed their real allegiances to the Kremlin. Obama is using a similar strategy by directing Samantha Power to go wherever new SecState Hillary Clinton goes.

Those two ladies hate each other, even before Power called Hillary "a monster" during the primaries. Power will report on Hillary to the White House. The Obamas are introducing a parallel staff for the major departments in the White House, to keep a jealous eye on its own appointees. The Clintons did this with the Justice Department, where Jamie Gorelick was the real power at Justice, and Janet Reno became the PR front.  We know about the results in a suicidal anti-terror policy, the cynical return of the little refugee boy Elian Gonzalez to the Castro tyranny, and the Waco massacre.

A Government-Media fusion

Karl Marx told his followers "First, conquer the Organs of Propaganda." In Marx’s Germany there was no free press. Britain was one of the few examples of relative freedom in Europe, which is why Marx ended up being a foreign correspondent in London,  as a ferocious public enemy of capitalism and elected governments.

Last week we found out that Rahm Emmanuel, George Stephanopoulos, James Carville and Paul Begala   have been carrying on daily, hour-long conference calls for the last 17 years, even while they were hopping from one top job to another in the White House, ABC News, and various liberal political campaigns. If you think all the big media sound oddly similar, we now now why.

A lockstep alliance between government and the big media is a marker of radical Leftist rulers. Putin just had a couple of more journalists murdered in Moscow. That is not likely to happen here, but then, it wont be necessary. The big media are already PR flacks for the Left. Well, just to make that relationship of buyer and bought explicit, a Boston Globe journalist has just proposed a special Federal bailout for newsies who have utterly destroyed their own audiences.  Somewhere in Hell Jozef Goebbels is smiling.

Appointing openly corrupt officials

Obama’s no-lobbyist rule is now a public joke.  Confessed tax cheaters were propopsed for top positions, like Tom Daschle and Timothy Geithner.  Big lobbyist power couples in Washington are being drawn in, including the Daschles.  And of course we have the endless Congressional show of Democrat corruption by Charlie Rangel, Chris Dodd and far too many others.

The appointment of radical Greenies to positions like the "Science Czar" — a huge self-contradiction — are sending very bad signals to the giant Federal research establishment.

Moving against conservative media

Immediately after the election, Fox News and Washington Times reporters were thrown off the Obama campaign plane. Obama’s first television interview just took place with terror-supporting Al-Arabiya TV, an Islamist riff on CNN.  A Republican FCC member has warned that a disguised censorship rule giving local leftist groups additional "community input" into radio license renewals may become law by administrative fiat.

That’s what we are seeing so far. Keep a sharp eye out in the coming weeks and months. Let’s hope the O’s will see reason somehow. But so far, the signals sent by their actions are ominous.